Thoughts and observations about the Start Up community

Friday Oct 16, 2009

Join us in celebrating the launch of Enternships.com during Global Entrepreneurship Week in style with the company of 900 entrepreneurs / SME's / investors / advisors / press / entrepreneurial students and graduates for a night of mingling with mojitos, speed networking, live entertainment (magicians, a cuban band, cocktail mixology lessons, Salsa lessons, Top DJs + more...) all until the early hours of the morning. You'll even leave with your very own Enternships goody bag!

The Sun Startup Essentials team and supporters will be running mini masterclasses on marketing, sales channels and brand strategy throughout the day, not as exciting as magicians but will help your business grow.

It's taking place from 7pm (until 2am) on Tuesday 17th November at Floridita, 100 Wardour Street, London W1F 0TN. Tickets are normally £20 (those magicians don't grow on trees, you know) but for the first 100 Sun Startup Essential members its FREE, yes I said FREE indeed.

If you would like to go then sign up here for a ticket - http://enternships.eventbrite.com/ , if you are a SSE member you will get your FREE code in the newsletter next week so wait till then and the whole Startup Essentials team will be there to greet you and say hi.

Thursday Oct 15, 2009

Instead
of having the "startup of the day" spotlighting one startup, we'll have
the "startups" (plural) of the day as a lot of startups shined
yesterday at our Menlo Park campus when they pitched their products to
North England. The 3-4 winners of the "stimulus package" to set up shop
in Northern England will be announced soon. In the meanwhile, here's a
synopsis of all the cool companies.

Wednesday Oct 07, 2009

Facebook has grown into one of the largest sites on the Internet today serving over 200 billion pages per month. The nature of social data makes engineering a site for this level of scale a particularly challenging proposition. In this presentation, I will discuss the aspects of social data that present challenges for scalability and will describe the the core architectural components and design principles that Facebook has used to address these challenges. In addition, I will discuss emerging technologies that offer new opportunities for building cost-effective high performance web architectures.

Monday Sep 28, 2009

Brand
strategy is one of the most fraught areas of marketing, though also one
of the most important. As a Startup it's often the element that gets
left behind and not really identified. But how can you tell an investor
what business you are in, if you don't really know yourself? It's a
vital step in creating the company identity.

The
key point is you can’t have a strategy without a clear objective.
Restating a goal is not strategy, execution is not strategy, and
tactics are not strategy. This masterclass will demonstrate why a
strategic approach to brand management can play a crucial role in
defining a strong, winning identity for your company.

What does this mean ?

When
you're talking to investors, you'll be able to clearly articulate who
your market is, describe how talking and listening to your customers
will better equip you to target your audience and take your message
out, in these tough economic times.

Why should I attend
this masterclass?

Because you will learn to define:

what business are we REALLY in?

in that context, what's our positioning?

who are our key stakeholders? Which are most important at this stage?

can we crisply define and communicate the compelling value we offer?

what are our core and secondary value propositions?

having
established all the above, are we able - in plain language and briefly
- to communicate our differentiated and powerful branding to clients,
partners, media and investors?

Hear
from Michael Bayler, a senior consultant and published author,
specialising in consumer-led marketing and innovation. Mike has a
wealth of experience speaking on current issues such as post-Internet
brand strategy, consumer culture, digital marketing, and branded
entertainment. Having advised some of the world’s leading brands, media
companies and international stars, including Nokia, Diageo, Telefonica,
Bacardi Global Brands, Sky, BT, Sony BMG, Sony ATV, Ogilvy &
Mather, Robbie Williams, Dido and Simon Cowell, Mike know's his stuff!

So, you’ve decided to take the plunge and set up the next Google. You’re on version 12 of the business plan and you’re trying to make all the numbers add up. You can’t get the sums to work but you torture them long enough and they eventually confess.Now all you have to do is find partners, programmers, designers, lawyers, accountants and most importantly, investors. Then you have to tell the rest of the world about your idea; blogs and emails are a great way to communicate but there’s nothing quite like getting out there and testing your idea on real, live people. You also need to build that all-important network of contacts who will help you make your dream a reality. Without contacts and advocates your idea will not fly, a point reinforced very well by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman at a recent conference I attended. He said, “Your network is your net worth.”

So where do you go to make it all happen? You could do worse that try a few (or all) of these London-based gatherings.

1. DrinkTankThis one was set up fairly recently from the nice people at Huddle. Unlike other events they are fairly selective about the guest list. The last one I attended was very full, a lot of fun and good for business. No presentations or long speeches - just lots of beer and conversations.

2. MiniBarOne of the more informal gatherings on the circuit. Noisy and sometimes difficult to hear what the presenting companies are saying but still worth the trip to this wonderful part of East London. I have met some great people at this one.

3. Second Chance TuesdayThese happen infrequently but are excellent. The auditorium where it’s held (The Royal College of Physicians near Regent’s Park) is a great place to actually hear what the speakers are saying. The networking sessions both before and after the interviews in the library is also very well attended.One of my favourite events - they should hold them more regularly.

4. ChinwagThe best name of any event by far and run by the amiable duo Sam Michel and Deirdre Molloy. This is another panel discussion event so most of the networking is at the end. The topics discussed are always well thought out but the event can be a little hit or miss depending on the quality of the panel members.

5. Mashup\*EventThis is a more formal sit-down-and-listen-to-expert type event. I have only been once but learned a lot. The one minute pitches at the end of panel session are fun to watch.

6. Open CoffeeInspired by Saul Klein and the insightful folks at Seedcamp. Takes place every Thursday in West London. I have been 4-5 times and have met a wide variety of people each time. It’s a good place for those who are thinking about taking a leap and becoming an entrepreneur as it’s a rich environment to test out your idea on other people.

7. Imperial entrepreneursI haven’t been to this one yet but my business partner Phil has been to a couple of these and has seen some excellent speakers present. Student run so takes a long summer break each year.

8. Facebook Developer Garage LondonI went to one of these a few months ago. Not an event I would rush back to but useful if you’re a developer looking to network with potential clients looking to build applications.

9. Social Media CaféI haven’t been to this yet but I plan to get there soon - we’ve heard good things about it.

10. BootlawAKA ‘the Danvers and Barry show’ in reverence to Danvers Baillieu and Barry Vitou of the law firm Winston & Strawn. Have yet to attend but it looks like it could be a very useful event for online startups to pick up some free legal advice and meet lots of other fellow entrepreneurs.

And of course now we are part of the Startup Essential programme we will be going to Stewarts monthly meetings, to network with the rest of the members and dicuss partnerships, drink beer, eat pizza and make the most of Sun's vast network and resources to help us.

Thursday Sep 04, 2008

Virtual Box 2.0

Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0.0 was released today, and is available for download from virtualbox.org.
New features include 64-bit guest support, host interface networking on
Solaris and OS X hosts, support for nested paging on modern AMD CPUs,
and a native front end for the OS X client (and a move to Qt 4 for the
others).

Monday Sep 01, 2008

So you do ?

Startup Essentials, is happy to announce that it is a prefered partner of Carsonified and working together we are aiming to help support the Startup Community for the long term.

So whats this Free exhibition thing all about then ? FOWA Expo London is Europe's largest and most important gathering of
web professionals, attracting web development teams from both large
enterprises and startups, web entrepreneurs (CEO's and Founders), web
designers / creatives, investors and VCs and the industry press. With over 3000 attendees over 2 days this is the event to capture attention from a large audience, listen to some interesting speakers whilst driving new business for your startup.

So what do you get ?

VALUE - £2500 yes thats a whole £2500 english pounds of exhibition space, that you have a chance of winning !!!

This means that two people can be at the event, one can attend the sessions whilst the other mans the stand. So you get access to the content, push your startup to the exhibition audience and go to the Digg Party...!!!!!!

Work with a vendor who understands performance inside out, scaling and how crucial it is in growing a business early on, making Enterprise quality available to any Startup at a LOW COST PRICE NOW.
Want a price or more information, call 01344 429218 or email info(AT)startupessentials.co.uk

So what do I have to do ?

Are you based in the UK ?
Have you been trading for 6 years or less ?
Do you have 150 employees or less ?

Answered YES to all, then SIGN UP HERE NOW and in the tracking code enter FOWA08, a draw will take place on the 22nd September and if you are the winner, then you will receive an email and telephone call on the Tuesday 23rd September with all the details required.

Friday Aug 29, 2008

Vodafone Sim dies after 7 years

My mobile stopped accepting calls and wouldnt ring out at 9.05 am today, out of the blue, no reason I had made some calls at about 8.00 o clock or so, and was planning my morning. Then the dilemna..!!! I couldnt make an outbound call, just assuming that it was the area I was in, then started to get emails saying people couldnt get through.

I contacted Vodafone, whose customer service is excellent, within 5 minutes the lady had identified that my Sim was to old and I required a new one, this will be shipped out on Mon or Tues, and rediverted the calls to my land line at home, thus I cant now go out to my planned meetings.......

But the aspect of all this is, Im lost without my mobile, it feels like something is lacking in my technology toolkit, blankly looking at it, hoping the sim will come back to life, its like losing your Internet connection, you feel lacking. When I first started in sales, it was selling out on the road with a list of customer calls, some pre booked some cold calling, but you had to find a phone box to ring in every two hours the orders or updates that you had to made certain you hit deliveries, now if you arent available in the day, at any time there is something wrong.

Friday Aug 22, 2008

So barcamp Leeds was last week and part of the LS1 week, that has seen another northern city bring together a series of events aimed at supporting the startup and entrepreneur community locally. At the heart of this is Imran Ali, a person who I have a lot of respect for in spending time to pull a group of like minded people together and drive these events to happen, it takes a lot of energy and effort to bring together a 100 people, feed them and in certain respects guide them.

Barcamp leeds, Im proud to say that I, thus Startup Essentials supported and sponsored to help with that effort and will continue to do so, to enable communities to share their knowledge and passion is core to Sun as a company, but also to Startup Essentials as a means to help startups. So what happened over this weekend then ?

\* Two days

\* 90 People

\* 39 Sessions on all manner of subjets.

And some great ideas, future thought discussions and new business relationships forged, thus counting it a huge success in my eyes and shows also the people behind this event, worked hard to make it happen to keep the audience there and discussing till late in the night (or was it the Startup Essentials supported element haha)

If you don't know what a barcamp is, find one near you and go, it is so rewarding in the fact that the audience create the content, you decide what you want to hear and talk about, thus it is so diverse but also stimulating sharing those ideas.

Anyway if you want to know more, check out Imrans blog it has all the details on the event and when its happening next, if you want details on these types of events, then don't forget join Startup Essentials now.

Thursday Aug 21, 2008

For anyone that knows me, Iam the man in the shirt that runs Startup Essentials in the UK and above is myself looking at the dilemna I face

We Need You

Well to be exact I need to inform you of what Sun can do for you, and you need to tell me does that help ? What more can I do to help you grow, scale and be successful ?

So to start off, what does Sun microsystems do ? To me its simple, we are the best vendor in the world to work with, we don't compete with you, we are a global organisation full of bright people who want to help and make the world a more interesting place, that uses less power and heat but gives us amazing technology that keeps reducing in size but scales beyond belief.

\*We are the biggest contributor to Open Source on the planet

\*We invest over $2bn in R&D year on year.

\*We design our hardware to be resilent, beautiful and simplistic to install and manage

\*We are open, OpenSolaris, OpenStorage, MySQL, Glassfish, you get the picture.

So what does Startup Essentials do ?

Simply, it helps you interact with all the great things about Sun, that differentiates us from other vendors who can provide you a server, delivered to your door. So here is what we do !!!

\*Sell x86 servers, Intel or AMD you choose, Did you know these can run Windows, Linux and Solaris, yes they run and support multiple OS and virtualisation as well. These machines are made for Enterprise, Remote access and management built in, front to back cooling, designed to be readily accessible but at STARTUP pricing.

\*Open Storage - We provide in Startup Essentials Enterprise class storage solutions, that Smugmug, Blue Orange, etc are using due to its open aspect, and pricing. Ask now if you purchase storage, you will be amazed at the price and how it will save you time, money and is so simple to setup and administer. 5 Minutes and up and running, is what one customer said.

\*Hosting - We can provide through partners, VPS, CoLo, Dedicated, Managed hosting for you now.

\*MySQL - DBA/Performance Tuning - Ask how Startup Essentials can give you a discount on a DBA and Performance tuning for your MySQL database, without having a full time employee.

\*Community events - Are you aware that we host and support events for the UK and Irish Startup community ? Every month we host a Facebook Garage, recently I have held Drupal for Enterprise events, Pizza on Rails and sponsored Techcrunch pitch . Also every quarter we have a Startup Essential meetup to help make certain that Startup have the chance to network and collaborate together. I also host events, bringing together all the members once a month to network, share ideas and listen from industry leaders about topics such as PR, Marketing, Legal and Funding etc, the content requirements are driven by the members, so they get to hear what they require.

\*PR/Marketing - Sun a global corporation, why would they want to do PR with me ? So as part of Startup Essentials customer base, you have access to our PR team to write a customer success story, that gets pushed out to Analysts globally, at present we have two Startup Essentials customers working with analysts that will get included in their global reports, to be pushed out to a global mainstream audience. So what does the PR look like ?

And also we have produced videos with our customers, that get pushed across the whole of Sun.com and out to the press, and at regular intervals we pull together a Press roundtable, invite our Startup Essential customers to talk about their experience and how Sun has helped them in different ways.

\*Introductions - Do you want to talk to Investors from Angel to VC ? Would you like to be part of a larger network to push your offering across different geographies ? How can we help you grow and scale ? Do you need legal advice ? What is a term sheet ?

- With my access to a wide range of people in the community, inside Sun and across EMEA and the US I can help support you as a Startup Essential customer to gain more outreach and look for synergies with other Startups for collaboration or a JV.

So the question is, How can I help you ?

Join now at Startup Essentials and start to work with a global organisation who supports the Startup community and understands whats needed, Start Smart.

Saturday Jul 19, 2008

Facebook UK, Facebook Garage London and Sun Startup Essentials bring you a special one time only, chance to be there as the f8 Keynotes are broadcast LIVE from San Francisco CA. We'll be streaming Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO), and Ben Ling's (Director of Platform, Facebook) keynotes about the State of Platform and where its headed in the future - and tickets will be FREE